Sonic Youth @ McCarren Pool 7/28/2007
Teenage Riot / Silver Rocket / The Sprawl / Cross The Breeze / Eric’s Trip / Total Trash / Hey Joni / Providence / Candle / Rain King / Kissability / The Wonder / Hyperstation / Eliminator Jr. // Incinerate / Reena / Do You Believe In Rapture? / What A Waste /// Jams Run Free / Pink Steam
I saw Sonic Youth perform Daydream Nation in its entirety twice in the span of a couple weeks, and if you really want to know, the first time in Chicago was better. Specifically, it was better for me — I’m not sure if I can actually compare the performances in any meaningful way because I was so much more emotionally involved the first time around, in part because I was alone in the middle of a crowd of people who responded with so much joy and passion that it couldn’t help but be a more visceral experience. (In comparison, the Brooklyn audience was…well, a Brooklyn audience, i.e. “extremely psyched in their own way,” as my friend very charitably put it.) The Chicago set was very special for me, not simply because the band were playing a lot of songs that I loved, and several selections that I never had the opportunity to witness live, but because I was connecting with songs in unexpected ways. In particular, “Eric’s Trip” suddenly felt like a decade and a half of memories colliding head-on with my future, and “Jams Run Free” was the saddest, happiest, loneliest, most romantic thing I’d ever heard. Both of those songs were played in Brooklyn too, and though I enjoyed them quite a bit, there was no recapturing that perfect, spontaneous emotional reaction.
(I should note that in both performances of “Eric’s Trip,” Lee Ranaldo omitted some words in the same spaces — for example, he sang “I’m over the city, fucking the future,” but “I’m high and inside your kiss” was gone — and added new lines before the “I see with a glass eye, the pavement view” verse, something very close to this: “The sky is blue / the sky is the deepest, darkest blue I’ve ever seen / and points on a globe / are just points on a globe.” It’s interesting to me that after performing the song so many times over the years, he still seems to be revising it, much more like a poet than a rock singer.)
Sonic Youth “Hey Joni” (Live in 1988) -This is not to say that the McCarren set was a disappointment, or inferior, or that I didn’t connect. “Candle” was certainly better this time around, maybe the best performance of that song I’d ever seen. Though Chicago got a much more inspired improvised mid-section of “Silver Rocket” and a seriously intense take on “Cross The Breeze,” Brooklyn had the luck of getting more polished renditions of “The Sprawl,” “Total Trash,” and “The Wonder.” “Hey Joni” was my jam, the thing that clicked perfectly, and seemed to make sense of the nostalgic nature of the show with its rapid burst of words presenting a timeline like a shoelace tied into a knot. 1988 was 1995 was 2002 was 2007 and 2012. Emotions, books, outlooks on life. Hello 2015! Hello 2015! (Oh wait, that’s another song.) (Click here to buy it from Amazon.)
The Slits “Love Und Romance” – I arrived a little bit too late, and as I approached the gates, I noticed that the Slits were already on, and were playing my favorite song in their catalog, “Love Und Romance.” It was fun to see them once I got in and close to the stage, but it’s a shame I missed so much of it — there were some newer songs I didn’t know too well, and after Ari Up (dressed up like a Rastafarian cheerleader!) announced that they were about to play the song everyone had been waiting for, they performed “Typical Girls,” which was fantastic, but uh…not “I Heard It Through The Grapevine.” Did they already play “Grapevine”? I’d love to know.
Ah, “Love Und Romance”! My trusty mix tape staple! My favorite manic, cheerfully unreasonable lust song! The twisting, the turning, the giggles and chants! And the bass! It is permanently swirling around in the back of my head, surfacing in the strangest, blankest moments. (Click here to buy it from Amazon.)